Faith Matters - Current Posts

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the dictator Joseph Stalin hoped to eradicate Christianity from Russia. In an effort to replace Christian faith with Communist atheism he sent commissars to every city and town and village, even to the most remote places in the Soviet Union. They delivered long speeches, trying to persuade the people that God did not exist and that they should renounce Jesus Christ and replace him with Karl Marx. After one such speech to an assembly of peasants in a remote rural village, the commissar finished with a flourish. He had talked a very long time and he was pretty well satisfied with himself. He was convinced that he had talked the impressionable peasants out of their faith and into his communism and atheism. When he sat down there was a deep silence in the assembly hall. Then a Russian Orthodox Priest stood up in the back of the hall and shouted out, “I have one thing to say to you. Christ is risen!” The entire crowd immediately and resoundingly replied, “Christ is risen, indeed!”The people in that hall had experienced Jesus for themselves in their lives and they had believed. Nothing was going to dissuade them. Karl Marx had remained in his tomb, but death could not hold Jesus.This Easter I invite you to see for yourself. Experience the risen Christ. See the empty tomb. Believe in him and be transformed from now to eternity.